From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sun Aug 18 02:10:52 1996
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Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 02:10:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Message-Id: <199608180610.CAA17446@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson
Subject: Bell System History: The Eastland Disaster
The employees of the Bell System's manufacturing facility known as
Western Electric in Chicago had been planning it for months. It was
to be the annual company picnic and employee recognition ceremony.
Each year, Western Electric provided an all-expense paid outing for
employees, and gave special monetary rewards to the employees
recognized by the company as outstanding in their performance.
Typically it would be a pot-luck picnic with lots of food and
beverages for everyone. A band would entertain with music and then
during the afternoon the managers would open sealed envelopes to
reveal the winners of the prizes. There would be prizes for everyone
but the honored employees would receive special gifts.
Saturday, July 24, 1915 was a beautiful day, weather-wise. Not too
hot, and not too humid. It would indeed be a great day for a ride
on the boat that Western Electric had chartered for the occassion.
It was a huge steam-operated vessel called the Eastland; it had
been in service for many years and had been the scene of many happy
and joyous occassions as newly married couples celebrated their
marriage ceremony with parties; as companies like Western Electric
held annual social events for employees, etc. Docked at the
pier under the Dearborn Street bridge on the Chicago River, the boat
would cruise several miles out into Lake Michigan and return later
in the evening.
That Saturday morning the employees of Western Electric began
arriving quite early to secure the best seats on the boat. Soon the
parking lot nearby was full and dozens of employees were walking
down the street in groups of three or four or more to the stairs
leading down to the dock where the boat and many of their co-workers
were already waiting. In all, over two thousand people were present
including the spouses and other family members who were all part of
the larger corporate family known as Western Electric and Bell.
Promptly at 7:30 A.M. the Eastland began pulling away from the dock
just as promised, with the passengers waving and calling to passers by
who saw them leaving. It was only a few feet out in the water and a
few yards away from the dock when it happened:
To this day, the various versions of the story are disputed; some say
the boat was defective, but many others claim the problem was with the
crowd of people on board. What is known is that a large number of
passengers all went to one side of the boat at one time to look at
something which had been called to their attention. In the process,
the Eastland tipped over from the unbalanced weight, and as it tipped
over and began to sink everyone on board fell in the water; either
immediatly or after attempting to hang on to the side for a few
seconds.
A call for help went out immediatly, and within a matter of minutes
a number of the men of the Chicago Fire Department and Chicago Police
Department were on hand attempting to rescue the hundreds of people
in the water. A good many swam to shore on their own, and many were
rescued by the police and firemen, in a rescue effort which went on
for ** several hours ** with hundreds of the passengers trapped inside
cabins on the boat which was now totally upside down in the water and
mostly submerged.
There have also been many versions of the rescue operation; some say
that the captain of the Eastland at first refused to allow the rescue
workers to cut away portions of the side of the vessel to get to the
people trapped inside. Others say that by that time it was too late
anyway, since everyone trapped would have been dead. There has been
criticism made of the rescue workers saying that instead of making
an orderly evacuation of the passengers in the boat as it was sinking
they allowed panic to overcome common-sense, and that it was panic
which caused most of the deaths.
In all 812 people died that Saturday afternoon, and even into the
early hours of Sunday morning bodies were being brought to the dock
at the Dearborn Street bridge where physicians who had been called
to assist would pronounce each person dead before the bodies were
taken away or released to anxious family members or co-workers who
lingered nearby throughout the evening and into the overnight hours.
In its Sunday edition of July 25, 1915, the {Chicago Tribune} devoted
several pages to the horrible event of the day before, and again on
Monday, July 26 the paper devoted its attention to the deadly weekend
just past, listing the names and addresses of the people who had died
in the disaster. The list of names took an entire page in the {Tribune}
that day. An investigation and formal inquiry by the Chicago Common
Council (what is now called the City Council) began early in August
and went on for almost a month.
Monday, July 26, 1915 was a very somber day at 'Hawthorne Works', as
the Western Electric plant was known. Workers gathered in small groups
around the plant to discuss the nightmare they had all witnessed two
days before. The plant was closed the next day and the day following
for funeral services which were held throughout the city, and in
addition, the Bell System called for a day of mourning later that week
with all but essential employees excused from work to attend memorial
services in cities across the United States with the top executives of
the company attending such a service as a group in Chicago.
The shock took a long time to wear off at Hawthorne Works. Finally in
late August, nearly a month after the incident, Western Electric began
hiring persons to replace those who had died in the Eastland disaster.
One day in early August, two quite unexpected visitors showed up at
Hawthorne Works to meet with the survivors: Alex Bell and his wife
Mabel spent most of the day walking about the plant pausing at each
work station and desk to shake hands and spend a minute chatting.
Although Alex Bell had been out of the 'phone business' for a number
of years, he and Mabel each held considerable amounts of the company
stock in both AT&T and Western Electric. As they would stop to chat,
Mabel had a notebook and would make careful note of the names of the
persons who had died, along with the names of their family members,
etc. Each employee would tell her something new she had not heard
before. By that point in time, Alex had become quite hearing-impaired
-- virtually deaf -- and from time to time Mabel would look at him and
talk in a loud voice into the speaking tube like device with a horn on
the end which he held up to his ear. Later over the next several
weeks, the families of the persons who died that Saturday afternoon in
July each received personal notes of condolence from Alex and Mabel,
along with gifts which were deemed appropriate in each case.
Litigation against Western Electric (as the organization which
chartered the Eastland) and the proprietors of the Eastland went on
for three years afterward, with the last of the suits being settled in
1918, about three years later.
The last of the survivors of the Eastland disaster continued her
employment with Western Electric for another 35-40 years. She had
been just a young woman when she started with the company where she
stayed her entire working career until she retired in the early 1950's.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Eastland disaster in 1965 she was
interviewed by the {Chicago Tribune} and she gave her reminisences
of that day. Then everyone forgot about it again, and by the middle
1980's most people in Chicago never even had heard of it, let alone
know anything about it. There was no marker, no commemorative of any
kind at the location.
But a group of high school students did not forget about it. A few
years ago several teenagers looked at the dusty old reels of {Tribune}
microfilm from the summer of 1915 and thought others should know about
this event in the city's history, so they went to the Chicago City
Council as a group and convinced the council to allow them to raise
the money to install a permanent marker at the point on (what is now
called Wacker Drive but was then South Water Street) between Clark and
Dearborn Streets as a commemorative. It was installed by those kids
and anyone today walking down the sidewalk on the north side of Wacker
Drive at that point can read about what took place there now 81 years
ago.
I am surprised at the large number of people in this industry -- even
telco employees -- who have never heard of the Eastland disaster and
the tragedy which took the lives of 812 of the early pioneers of the
industry. Perhaps you had never heard of it either, or knew very
little about it.
Perhaps this note will serve to inform you also.
PAT